Obstacles prevent campus recycling
Lack of resources hampers Alpha Phi Omega, trashes fraternity’s program

By Jennifer Koesling
Staff Reporter

With Earth Day 2001 on Sunday, officials with Alpha Phi Omega, TCU’s community service fraternity, are still looking for another organization to take over the campus-wide recycling program.

“We understand that it’s Earth Day and that recycling is important, but we do a lot of other things on campus so (the program) has not been a top concern,” APO President Dana Schmitz said.

University minister John Butler said other groups like TERRA, the environmental awareness organization, handle some recycling on campus, but APO’s future role in the program is uncertain.

“APO is currently speaking with residence hall groups to try to work something out for the future, but I don’t know when it will begin again,” Butler said.

Schmitz said the organization stopped collecting recycling bags in January when the TCU Police Department decided it would no longer loan out its golf carts.

“We had Ecobins set up in the Student Center and residence halls, and we would borrow a golf cart to take those bags to the freshman parking lot, where they would then be picked up by a recycling service,” Schmitz said.

Asst. Police Chief J.C. Williams said the department received a large number of requests for the golf carts from several campus groups.

“We had calls all of the time from different people, like coaches who wanted to show recruits around campus or admissions wanting to use them to travel with heavy photography equipment to take pictures for a marketing project,” Williams said.

Williams said there are only six carts, with a couple of carts occasionally in the shop for maintenance.

He said the decision was made because the overuse had been putting a strain on the budget to keep the carts running.

“Every battery recharge was an increased maintenance charge, and the carts were in the shop more than they were out, so we had to squeeze a little tighter to keep costs down,” Williams said.

He said the goal to provide the Froggy-Five-0 for nightly escorts was important, and any daytime use of the carts affected the nighttime use.

“We eventually had to stop lending the carts out because the batteries would die down when we needed them for the nightly escorts,” Williams said.

Butler said using personal transportation to continue the recycling service was not a feasible option.

“Cleanliness and liability were good reasons for the students not to use their own cars to continue the service,” he said.

Butler said Housekeeping Services picked up the bags one more time before the Ecobins were removed earlier this semester by APO.

Jennifer Koesling
j.c.koesling@student.tcu.edu